SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944)

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Lot n° 200
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5000 - 7000 EUR
SAINT-EXUPÉRY Antoine de (1900-1944)
MANUSCRIPT autograph, [1938?]; 6 pages in-4 in black ink. Unpublished text, evocation of oases, and reflection on the war, one passage of which will be reused in Terre des hommes. The manuscript presents some erasures and corrections. The handwriting is difficult to decipher, and the quotations we will give are sometimes conjectural. "I had landed in Morocco on the occasion of a runway. And I had stayed in Foued el Hassan and Goulimine, those pre-Saharan posts that are already oases with their palm groves, running water and washing machines that make the miracle of oases. Suddenly the domain of men ceases in the white earth and sand". He evokes the "steep roads of the Atlas, [...] these cracks in the cliff where the sea begins. And already these reefs where water becomes divinity. "He left with his raincoat. He thought he'd reach the post... But the well he was counting on had dried up. He stopped about a mile away and was found coming back..." Already this atmosphere is different from the Beauce. The Bohemian can, with his eyes closed, move and live there. He lives in this great park of Europe"... Why doesn't man want to leave the cities? "He who lived the night in the desert, by a transient fire, and who slowly sees the stars appearing eastward... I only had to cross my memory to find it [...] This wind, this sand, these stars, and this sun. And settled there to preserve them, man. [...] Walking from post to post you find him patting you on the shoulder and quenching your thirst, [...] in these oases among the palm trees and the whores [...] or if he walks in a caravan carrying his junk, perhaps from one town to another, but also his loves [...] and his regrets and his desires"... SaintEx finds the one who "has been our interpreter on the line, for years, towards Beirut. He's a kaid from somewhere"... Then he evokes Captain de Latour, who recounts an episode of the Rif war [this passage was taken up again, with variations and without the officer's name, in the Paris-Soir article of October 4, 1938, "It is necessary to give a meaning to men's lives", part of the report La Paix ou la Guerre?and integrated into chapter VIII of Terre des hommes (Pléiade, t. I, pp. 277-278 and 356-357)]: the captain receives parliamentarians from a mountain tribe, when his post is attacked by another tribe; his hosts help him to repel the attack. "The next day it is up to them to attack Latour. But before the battle an emissary comes to find him. / - Yesterday we defended you. We spent thirty cartridges for you. Give them back to us. / - It's regular... / Latour gives them back, as a great lord, these bullets that were meant for him. He told me this story. And he's silent and I'm silent. And I know what he regrets. This nobility in human relations. I could well ask him "justify your war to me?" He would answer me wrongly because we have concepts. And that one must, somehow, justify oneself. But deep down he won't believe it, nor anyone else. This is my great truth about the war."... Etc
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